A lot of us here like Macrium Reflect there's a Free and a Paid version but the Free should do all you need. I used the free version for quite a while but the purchased 4 licenses when I saw a good price since I figured they deserved to get paid for their efforts. Others here like EaseUS ToDo Backup Free. On the Paid Only side quite a few are fans of Acronis True Image. HTH

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Slovey,
it is common for most paid versions to offer extended capabilities to recover images to dissimilar hardware in event of catastrophic hardware failure. Otherwise most free versions are fine.
Michael

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I use Image For Windows from TeraByte Unlimited. It's not free (you can try it for 30 days for free, fully functional) but quite capable.

Create a new drive image before making system changes, in case you need to start over!

"Let them that don't want it have memories of not gettin' any." "Gratitude is riches and complaint is poverty and the worst I ever had was wonderful." Brother Dave Gardner "Experience is what you get when you're looking for something else." Sir Thomas Robert Deware. "The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem. Savvy?" Captain Jack Sparrow. Unleash Windows

If at least one of your hard drives (either the drive being backed up or the drive you are writing the backup to) is Seagate or Maxtor, you can use the free Seagate Disk Wizard to do backups. I have it, and it is a solid product.

I've been this for years for full partition backups. It does file-based backups too. It works on both XP and Windows 7. It lets you do both incremental and differential backups, which even some pay programs don't. You can run it on the partition you're working on in Windows, since it uses Window's Shadow Copy. You can create two types of backup program boot disks with it [the WinPE disk is the more fully featured one, you need a Windows 7 computer to create it].

The only good feature missing is USB 3.0 speed for external drives on backups/restores from the Easeus ToDo boot disk. You obviously need a USB drive, cable and computer with a USB 3 port for that to work for starters. If you do have all the USB 3 hardware (I do), you can run Easeus ToDo from within Windows, and it will backup at USB 3 speeds. If you compare this program to payware re this feature, make sure the payware boot disk actually runs with your computer's specific USB 3.0 chip before deciding (or do some timing of the competition's demo version).

I use Casper. Version 8 is now out, which handles Win8 as well as Win7. The family pack is a bargain. I have installed it on other computers with non-savvy users, run a backup, then it asks if I want to make an icon for that task. Yes. Icon made, I tell the user to make regular backups by plugging in the external disk, and clik the icon, Done. There is a useful boot disk. Boot from backup disk or plug it in and read the data like a normal disk ie it is a full image, it does not do compressed images. Latest version offers you the option of doing compressed images and keeping several on one external disk. Best thing of all, the technical support is superb. They try to reply the same day (European time)! Replies usually begin with a simple paragraph, then give several paragraphs of detailed explanation for those who love it. No question seems too difficult for them.

It works, reliably. Family pack is a bargain. Extremely easy to set up and use. Technical help superb.

EaseUS ToDo free version really is very easy to use and very reliable. Create or Restore a full system image backup with a couple of clicks, no problem. And, you can even restore a few selected files or folders from a full system image if you ever need to. Very solid piece of software.

Paragon's free backup program is also fairly easy to use and very reliable.

IMO you should have no need for a third party imager on Windows 8. In principle Recimg will take a full image of your OS drive, which will be used instead of the built-in refresh or reimage option. This has the huge advantage of keeping your desktop programs intact (at the time the image was taken). http://www.recimg.com/

Before Recimg (which I haven't restored from yet but expect it will work!) I used to use Macrium Reflect (free) which I found excellent and successfully restored from. However with Reflect as with other image programs, you have to boot to a CD or flash drive to allow restoration of the OS partition. With Recimg this is not needed.

You'll be really glad to have that boot media if the hard drive fails. I'm just sayin'... HTH

Good point RG, thanks!. I take Macrium Reflect images over the first few weeks with a new machine (about 3 - one as new, one half-way through software installation and one fully-installed), so I can go back to a fully-installed version if I have to replace the hard-drive or the computer. But from then on I plan to use Recimg.

IMO you should have no need for a third party imager on Windows 8. In principle Recimg will take a full image of your OS drive, which will be used instead of the built-in refresh or reimage option. This has the huge advantage of keeping your desktop programs intact (at the time the image was taken). http://www.recimg.com/

Before Recimg (which I haven't restored from yet but expect it will work!) I used to use Macrium Reflect (free) which I found excellent and successfully restored from. However with Reflect as with other image programs, you have to boot to a CD or flash drive to allow restoration of the OS partition. With Recimg this is not needed.

Recimg is nothing but an UI for the Windows backup utility. I confess I am not totally convinced of its reliability. I would rather stay with what has a good track record than rely on something completely new.